TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE!

TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE!

(FRAZER CHRONICLE)

(All the News That Nobody Else Will Print)

 

What a hoot, how can us taxpayers in 2014 make common sense out of what we pay into the money pot(s) of government. You got your local taxes, your regional tax, township tax, county tax, state tax, federal tax, excise tax, sales tax, street tax, road tax, and then a tax on taxes (I swear they do). I haven’t kicked or been too vociferous about the tax that we all pay…..in varying degrees, depending on how much you earn or how good a tax lawyer you’ve retained.

I’ve usually only talked about the trillions that we spend on wars through the tax dollars that we pay, and how the money could be put to much better use right here in the United States. There are governmental agencies that report where taxes are going, there’s also private groups that’ll bend your ears right off your head with their static about what should be done to cut our tax payments to a bare minimum.

I call these outfits, whether government or private groups the clickety clackers, they’ll make some noise, but nothing usually happens. They seem to rise up, get on a soap box somewhere, say their piece and then…..nothing.

These people are like the guy that hates his job, what he’s done, is identify his problem, but never gets around to solving the problem that he’s identified by either switching jobs, or upgrading his abilities or education so he can move up the latter where he’s working.

There really is a TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE group which is based out of Washington D.C. and their aim is to attempt to make government work through their grass roots efforts. I wish them luck, cause their gonna need it, they’ve attempted to bite off a huge chunk of controversy with regards to the tax laws in the United States today.

Make absolutely no mistake about it, I know little about the ins and outs of the United States tax codes, hell, my wife has always done our taxes, and like I say, “if there’s a mistake, talk to my wife,” hell, she even looks guilty.  

One thing that I do know about our tax system is that there are all kinds of fraud, incorrect reporting, corporate subsidies, farm subsidies, and just plain non-reporting of income that runs into the billions. I read someplace a while back that around the turn of the 20^th century, the tax laws of the U.S. were like 5 or 10 pages in length…..today, in the 21^st century, the tax codes and laws are close to a hundred thousand pages long.

Just to let you know that I did do my homework on this issue, there is a statutory tax rate, a legally imposed rate, and can be made up of multiple statutory rates for different income levels. Then there’s the average tax rate, the ratio of the total amount of taxes paid to the total tax base, taxable income or spending, expressed as a percentage.

Ok, ok, I have little idea about what I just wrote…..with regards to what in hell it means…..and I’ll bet there’s a huge percentage just like me, they don’t have a clue, it’s why H. & R. Block are so popular right around the middle of January until April 15. There’s been talk for decades about rewriting the code on taxes, but nothing is getting done very fast, so somebody is making beaucoup bucks.

IT’S LIKE PEOPLE THAT ARE WELL OFF TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SOCIAL SECURITY

As you get older you seem to spend less, especially on frivolous stuff, it’s like we’ve suddenly figured out what a dollar bill is really worth, how touch they are to come by, plus the fact that you no longer work for a living, but you rather sit around on your duff and play bingo…..waiting for the middle of the month to collect that rocking chair pay check.

Since I’ve retired, I don’t get out as much, but when I do, I talk, and talk, anybody who knows me can’t be surprised by that admission. Universally whenever the conversation gets around to money, pensions, social security, and investments, nobody has ever turned down their monthly social security check…..even if they could afford to pass it up.

I’ve always found that admission disturbing, and of course I voice that opinion, and baby, you’d be shocked at some of the responses, like “I earned it, and I’m gonna collect up until the day that I die”, and I’m sure if he could get away with it, on the day he died as well. Collecting social security money, if you don’t need it is, should be criminal. Somebody else could use that money, they worked too, maybe they weren’t smart, maybe they had some bad luck, or maybe they were just one of those people that were destined to work a crap bag job.

It seems to me that if only those that needed their social security checks collected, or those that were smarter, more fortunate, or maybe even worked harder didn’t, just maybe the social security plan for retirees would work.

But that subject matter is for a different time, the issue with this blog is the tax codes that we find ourselves under collectively. There is fraud, honest mistakes, and then those people and organizations that lobby up and down the halls of our government in Washington D.C. promoting for themselves a bigger slice of the tax pie.

I THINK THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE CONNECTED AT THE HIP

Those people who take advantage of social security when they don’t need it, and the shocking numbers of industry who take advantage of what is called corporate welfare have gotta be related somehow. The list of corporate welfare recipients is long, and carry common names that everybody has heard of, and most have purchased utilized some of their products on a daily basis. Have you heard of these companies, and did you realize the size of their subsidies;

Boeing, $13.2 billion

Alcoa, $5.6 billion

Intel, $3.9 billion

General Motors, $3.5 billion

Ford Motor, $2.5 billion

Dow Chemical, $1.4 billion

Berkshire-Hathaway Holdings, $1.1 billion

This is little more than a microcosm of the figures that were compiled featuring cash only information, and come from federal, state and local government disclosures. There’s also subsidizes in the form of actual cash giveaways, building and land transfers, tax abatements, steep discounts on water and electric bills as well as city, county, or state infrastructure cost waivers.

And then there’s the heavy weight of them all, SUBSIDILY speaking, farm subsidies far outstrip every other governmental subsidy’s. Farm subsidies are payments made and other support, extended by the U.S. Federal Government to certain farmers and agribusinesses, and is also known as agricultural subsidies.

Original intent of the U.S. farm subsidies was to provide economic stability to farmers during the depression to ensure a steady domestic food supply for American citizens. In the 1930’s 25% of the country’s population lived on the nation’s 6,000,000 small farms. Today close to 160,000 large farms account for close to 80% of farm sales, with less than 3% of the nation’s population residing on the farms.

Each year, the farmers of America rake in approximately $20,000,000 in agricultural subsidies, and between 2004 and 2014 more than $280 billion dollars, a period of time that saw farm prices rise by about 20% to around $100 billion in 2012. Between 1995 and 2009 seven states received 42% of all farm subsidies;

Texas, 9.4%

Iowa, 8.5%

Illinois, 7.1%

Minnesota, 5.8%

Nebraska, 5.7%

Kansas, 5.5%

North Dakota, 4.7%

I find it hard to believe that neither Wisconsin nor California do not appear in this list when you consider the amount of farming these two states do. Maybe this is one reason, 90% of agriculture subsidies go to farms that produce the big 5 crops…..wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton. More than 900,000 farmers and landowners receive subsidies, but payments are heavily tilted towards the largest producers.

The largest and wealthiest of the farmers in the United States received an average total payment over the past 15 years of $445,127 per recipient, or an average of $29,675.51 dollars. The bottom 80% of farmers received on average total payment of $8,682, an average of just $578.80 per year.

The Agricultural Act of 2014, or the Farm Bill was signed into law by President Obama on February 7, and guarantees $100 billion dollars a year in federal funding for the United States Department of Agriculture projects. There were special interests galore in the bill, and to hear some talk, more human entitlements should have been cut in order to tack on another $15 to $20 billion a year unto the act. The act is in place for the next five years.

OK SO WHAT DID WE LEARN

I can’t speak for anybody but myself, but clearly the research information that I included in this blog shows an almost total imbalance in subsidiaries, who gets them, and the amount that they get. I realize that America big business was at the taxpayer’s trough like a bunch of hungry pigs, and I also had a suspicion that many in Washington D.C. were involved in an almost complicit act.

But I wasn’t aware of the size of subsidy payments to Major League Business, and the lucrative business that tugs at every American’s purse strings. And I didn’t realize that Corporate Welfare was brazenly included in the federal budget that are elected officials are supposed to read, and then understand what it is that they are voting on…..but obviously they ain’t got a clue…..just like most of us.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!